What Values Govern Your Life?

BEFORE answering that question, you may need to consider this one: What do you want out of life? Riches, fame, excitement, sensational adventure, sexual fulfillment? Or perhaps your goal is a reputation for honesty, charity, compassion, public service, spirituality? Whatever it is, this Biblical rule holds true: ‘Whatever you are sowing, that is what you will reap.’​—Galatians 6:7.

If you trash true values, you must be willing to live with the consequences. Superior Court judge Paul R. Huot pinpoints some of them. Citing a drift away from respect for law, social decorum, and discipline, he said: “Things aren’t black and white anymore. Everything is gray. We’ve lost good manners. We’ve lost courtesy. We’ve lost decency. Fewer people recognize the difference between right and wrong. The sin now is getting caught, not the violation.”

As knowledge grows and power increases, there is greater need for morality to govern their use. (Proverbs 24:5) Unfortunately, the increase of knowledge and power has been accompanied by a collapse in morality. Historian Arnold Toynbee comments on this: “It is tragic to think that we have been so successful in the technological field, whereas our record of moral failures is almost immeasurable. . . . If the morality gap continues to widen, I foresee a time when private citizens may be walking round with pocket atomic bombs.”

The current trend is to devalue true values and relegate sin to the garbage dump. The attitude is the same as that of the adulterous woman of Proverbs 30:20: “Here is the way of an adulterous woman: she has eaten and has wiped her mouth and she has said: ‘I have committed no wrong.’” But sin is still with us, hale and hearty, only operating under such aliases as openness, freedom, relativism, values clarification, nonjudgmentalism​—all summed up as “the new morality.”

Making Wrong Look Right

Nothing has really changed since Isaiah’s time. His words are still on target: “Woe to those who are saying that good is bad and bad is good, those who are putting darkness for light and light for darkness, those who are putting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) To make the wrongs look right, they change the marks on the thermometer to make the fever normal.

Which values produce good results? Which ones make you happy, produce loyal friends, make for inner peace and contentment? Do you want a reputation for honesty, truthfulness, concern for others? To be liked, respected, loved? Or do you value more the having of unlimited possessions, to taste the power of great wealth? Is the satisfaction of fleshly desires of paramount importance? Is it vital for you to concentrate on self-fulfillment?

Illicit sex is widespread, enjoying a pat of approval from the media and society in general. But how destructive to marriage and family and the welfare of children! Growing out of this sexual permissiveness are the gross extremes of unnatural homosexual perversions so rampant today and which are tolerated and even sanctioned by some of the mainstream religions of Christendom. Relative to such practices, God’s Word asks and answers: “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.”​—Jeremiah 6:15, New International Version.

Jesus stressed the spiritual need, saying: “Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the kingdom of the heavens belongs to them.” (Matthew 5:3) But many dismiss this need as of little value and do nothing to fulfill it; yet lives devoid of it end up being superficial. Even with many worldly accomplishments, such lives are still superficial and lacking in genuine happiness and contentment of spirit. And sadly, those aware of the need and seeking its fulfillment in the churches of Christendom come away empty, for in Christendom there is, as the prophet Amos foretold, “a famine, not for bread, and a thirst, not for water, but for hearing the words of Jehovah.”​—Amos 8:11.

Moreover, many in the churches are not in the mood for healthful spiritual teaching, but ‘in accord with their own desires, they accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they are turned aside to false stories.’ (2 Timothy 4:3, 4) Both clergy and laity feel as did those in Isaiah’s day, saying to those seeing the spiritual need: “‘You must not see,’ and to the ones having visions, ‘You must not envision for us any straightforward things. Speak to us smooth things; envision deceptive things. Turn aside from the way; deviate from the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease just on account of us.’”​—Isaiah 30:10, 11.

Godly values need to be deep within you. If your decision is to reflect the true values recommended by God, the formula for you to follow is outlined in God’s Word: “Strip off the old personality with its practices, and clothe yourselves with the new personality, which through accurate knowledge is being made new according to the image of the One who created it.”​—Colossians 3:9, 10.

However, you may have no confidence in the Bible as being God’s Word. You may have been turned off by such doctrines as eternal torment for immortal souls in a fiery hell, or by the higher criticism that brushes the Bible aside as mere myth, or by the pious, hypocritical, money-grabbing misconduct of preachers falsely claiming to represent it.

Personal investigation will show that “the wages sin pays is death,” not torment in fire; that modern archaeology confirms the Bible as accurate history, not myth; that many of Christendom’s clergy are like the false clergy of Bible times, not the faithful prophets and apostles of those days.​—Romans 6:23; Matthew, chapters 5–7, 23.

The Bible is the source of true values. Allowing them to govern your life will mean God’s approval and will lead to everlasting life in a new world of righteousness, where “he will wipe out every tear from [mankind’s] eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”​—Revelation 21:4; John 17:3.

So let the true values extolled in God’s Word govern your life, thereby benefiting yourself: “I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk. O if only you would actually pay attention to my commandments! Then your peace would become just like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”​—Isaiah 48:17, 18.

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Peace like a river